Two problems stand out. The first is that Webber has a tendency to depict the rebels in a negative light. The common people, he says, were for the making their voice heard for the first time "and it was a terrifying one". It was, we are told, a "time of fair prosperity", "work was not hard to find" and while Webber notes the "discontent" at the poll tax, there is little here to explain the grinding daily horrors of feudalism. It's hard, on reading this account, to get a clear picture about why the rebels would revolt with such violence and why so many flocked to the rebel banners.
Indeed Webber seems to suggest that many of them were not really rebels, but just greedy for loot. He tells us that
Not all the rebels wanted to be there. Many would have liked to have done more looting and then to leave London and go into the countryside before justice caught up with them.
Perhaps that's true, but its not really evidenced - how do we know what they "felt", as Webber points out, we only have the biased chronicles and no voices of 1381's ordinary rebels. Indeed what was striking about the entry into London was how disciplined the rebels were. But "so what?", one is minded to ask. If they looted, they deserved some revenge for poverty and oppression.
A bigger problem is the book itself. Webber is prone to long rambling introductions that are relatively unrelated to the material. While Rochester Castle is important to the story of the revolt in Kent, we do not need it's 300 year history. Nor do we need the detail of the King's ancestors, their deeds at Crecy and so on. This is bloated and distracting.
Webber opens the book by decrying the source materials, pointing out (rightly) that they are biased. Yet his own work with source material is hard to follow. There are no references, and often things are claimed that deserve a source. What evidence is there for "unions" being formed among labourers? When describing John Ball he quotes William Morris' description from The Dream of John Ball, but doesn't inform the reader that this was written five hundred years later, and is a work of Morris' gifted imagination.
Webber finishes by pointing out that the rebellion did not end villeinage. But I think he errs on the side of caution too much by saying that the "economic problems were settled... by the slow working out of economic change over the next three hundred years". The history of the British Isles between 1381 and 1700 was hardly a period of slow working out of things. It was a convulsive period that saw great and sometimes bloody class struggle in the countryside. Feudalism may not have been legislated away, but it did have to be overthrown in a Revolution.
Webber's book does, at least briefly, acknowledge that 1381 spread beyond the areas usually associated with the rebellion - Kent and Essex, and mentions it elsewhere. But there's no real detail.
This is a disappointing and rambling short book. It offers a general history of the events of 1381, but will leave the casual reader wanting more and the more academic reader frustrated.
Related Reviews
Oman - The Great Revolt of 1381
Barker - England Arise! The People, The King and the Great Revolt of 1381
O'Brien - When Adam Delved and Eve Span
Lindsay & Groves - The Peasant's Revolt of 1381
Hilton - Bond Men Made Free
Basdeo - The Life and Legend of a Rebel Leader: Wat Tyler
Firnhaber-Baker & Schoenaers - The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt
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